Research

Amanda’s research focuses on the ideologies and institutions that drive racial inequality in the post-civil rights era United States, and the ways black Americans respond to multiple, intersecting, and dynamic systems of domination. Her dissertation and current research agenda focus on these issues in the context of gentrification in Brooklyn, New York; in her work, she illuminates ways historic and contemporary discrimination render black Brooklynites uniquely vulnerable to displacement and disenfranchisement, as well as vital institutions and expressive cultures black Brooklynites have developed in the context of profound structural constraints.

Located at the nexus of African American history, critical geography, urban history, and cultural studies, Amanda’s dissertation explores the racial operations of post-1970 gentrification in Brooklyn, New York. Using historical, sociological and ethnographic approaches, she links the history of race and structural racism in Brooklyn and the rise of neoliberalism and colorblind racial ideology to the cumulative vulnerabilities of black residents of gentrifying neighborhoods. Whereas the older model of gentrification traditionally presented itself as a restoration of old glamor, Amanda argues that current modes are signifiers of the triumph of global capital, which erases rather than restores old histories, and compels longstanding residents to flee and make room for the new rich. Through a close analysis of gentrification’s psychic, social, and material consequences for black communities, she also argues that it relies on a false sense of inclusion in order to further obscure the people, places, and cultural memories it erases. Amanda’s project links struggles for spatial control to struggles over racial control and self-determination. The exclusionary restructuring of urban space sheds light on the nature of the contemporary fragility of black communities, and has implications that extend far beyond the confines of a single borough.

Selected Research Awards & Honors

Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship (2018-2020)Office of the Provost, New York University